A stretcher is a medical device used to carry casualties or an incapacitated person from one place to another. Various embodiments of stretchers are known and used in the art.
The evacuation of injured or incapacitated persons in rural, underdeveloped, disaster, and war affected terrains, where commercial medical stretchers are incompatible or useless has been a unresolved problem. Currently available stretchers for rural, underdeveloped, disaster and war affected terrains, including those currently used by the U.S. military, require two persons to effectuate an evacuation. Furthermore, these stretchers are excessively bulky, heavy, and difficult to operate under normal extreme conditions presented in disaster and war affected terrains.
In civilian use, many people enjoy participating in outdoor activities such as running, hiking, mountain climbing and the like, and one of the drawbacks of many of these activities is the danger of serious injury or illness in an area that is difficult for emergency personnel to reach. When an injury or serious illness does occur in a remote or hard to reach location, it can be very difficult to safely transport the injured or incapacitated person from the remote location to a medical facility.
During combat, medical treatment facilities are typically located in a secure area separate from the battlefield. To receive medical care, the injured and wounded must be transported from the battlefield using conventional military issued litters. The survival and recovery of these individuals significantly depends upon extraction time; therefore it is desirable to design a litter that can be easily carried and quickly assembled under combat conditions to facilitate the extraction process and enable patients to more quickly obtain medical treatment.
Current U.S. military issued litter systems are heavy, bulky, often difficult to assemble and can be a substantial liability to the extraction process. These litter systems typically remain on transport vehicles during field exercises because of their prohibitive large weight and size. Therefore, litters are often not readily available to the military unit while on combat missions.
Although lighter weight structures have been designed the remaining issues to be resolved. The disclosed stretcher provides a number of advantages over prior art stretchers, with the primary improvements being in the strapping system and adjustable legs.